I can remember producing our first set of pop up graphics around 15 Years ago… It was a trade job for another company that sold portable display systems but outsourced their graphics production. I remember clearly the customer (I dealt with a nice chap called Dave) bringing in a strange looking, collapsible contraption and me thinking that it was the cleverest thing that I had ever seen! Since that first set of pop up stand graphics was produced, Printdesigns have produced over a thousand sets of panels for pop up displays. We have made them for all sorts of customers ranging from small businesses through to huge multi-nationals. The methods of production have become more streamlined with panels now being automatically cut by computer but the stands themselves have hardly changed at all. It’s almost inconceivable that given the progress and development of products in other industries that people are still using essentially the same portable structures for their exhibitions now that they were 15 Years ago so why is this? I believe that there are two main reasons:- 1. Firstly pop up display graphics are really easy to produce. Other than accurately trimming the panel, it is only a square cut piece of laminated PVC or polyester with magnetic tape stuck to the back 2. The level of investment in terms of equipment needed to produce the graphics is small. Any small sign company can purchase an ink jet printer and laminator for under £10,000 and be up and running producing pop up graphics in no time Are viable alternatives to pop up stands available? The answer is YES!

The fact is that there are real alternatives to traditional pop up stands available in the UK today. You can find these products on many supplier websites, usually buried deep within the menu of the site and hardly promoted.   In Mainland Europe and the USA, old fashioned magnetic pop up stands are all but extinct. There are hardly any suppliers promoting them and a trip to a typical European exhibition hall confirms that hardly any exhibitors are using these stands anymore. In Europe and USA companies have invested in the printing technology to produce large format fabric based pop up stands. They have also developed the skills to convert such large textile graphics into finished products by means of sewing/finishing the graphics. These are skills that in the UK have almost been lost entirely. A typical sign maker here would just about the capable of sewing a button but sewing a 3M long zipper on the bottom of a large format stretch fabric print…… certainly not! I realised Years ago that the UK was lagging behind considerably when it came to production of textile/fabric based exhibition stands but it was not until September 2013 following a move to larger premises that we ‘bit the bullet’ and invested in a 3.2M wide dye sublimation printer and finishing line. It took us around 6 Months of intensive product testing in terms of materials before we were ready to launch our new range of TEXStyle display stands. We are one of the few companies in the UK who stock and manufacture these systems in house. The TEXStyle display stand brochure can be downloaded here. Included in the brochure are links to assembly videos so you can directly compare these stands to traditional magnetic pop ups. Take a look for yourself and decide if you want to invest several hundred pounds in an old fashioned pop up that has changed little in 15 years!